Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones? (Rare/Unreleased Original Voice Audio and Unfinished/Unknown Episodes)
Whatever Happened to... Robot Jones? is one of the most short-lived Cartoon Cartoons, running for only a year in two seasons (12 episodes and a pilot with 27 segments) from 2002-2003. And while it's by no means the most coveted Cartoon Network show (all of its episodes are available online through Vimeo), what's most notably missing are the original dubs for the show's pilot and episodes, and some unfinished and unknown episodes. The show originally had synthetic robot audio for the voice of its titular character (as well as for other characters and parts of the show), and contrary to popular belief, it wasn't Macintosh Macintalk's Junior speech (and not a lawsuit from Apple to cause its removal from the show), but actually the Junior speech for Word 98's text to speech function, as the creator Greg Miller revealed, among other things, in a Facebook interview. He wanted a true synthetic robot voice and did a ton of reasearch into such programs when starting the show, even talking to the people at Bell Laboratories about different speech synthesizers and going with the Word program because of its specialized controls like speed, pitch emphasis and so on. He even did all of Robot Jones audio himself, importing it from the scripts, spelling them phonetically to get them right and tweaking pitch and other post-processing to get the "acting" right. But after the first couple of episodes, the executives were freaked out by how 'weird' the voice was, and requested a voice that was more 'Hollywood', so Robot Jones' automated voice was replaced by an actual child voice actor (Bobby Block) in Season 2. And not only that, but the pilot and the older episodes were redubbed with the newer voice actor as well. They even had audio for the Season 2 episodes recorded, but because the change happened during the production of those episodes, the audio was never mixed into the final prints In addition, one of the later-redubbed episodes ("Growth Spurts") had a new minor edit covering over a minor mention of "Kick Ass" to just "Kick", obviously because of minor cussing in a children's TV show. And on top of that, there were actually several episodes left unfinished, due to the show's cancellation. Three episodes, one being the history of robotics, one about Robot Jones going on the "Soapy Winfall" talk show, and an unknown episode (as he cites "it was so long ago I forget...") were storyboarded but never animated. It can be assumed that the first episode ("History of Robotics") could have revealed more of Robot Jones' family. There are two episodes that are unconfirmed to have existed: "Risk"Risk and Robotic Graffiti on Big Cartoon Database and "Robot Grafitti". A fan once posted a theory (not knowing anything about scrapped episodes, only from watching a banned Ren & Stimpy episode "Man's Best Friend") on Wikipedia that these two episodes were believed to be banned by Cartoon Network from airing in Season 2 as the fourteenth episode for containing excessive violence, harsh language, and sexual and/or scatological jokes, but this is entirely false info-- The real mystery behind these two episodes is whether they were scrapped and/or if they were finished or not.Illiop.com forum post debunking the theory behind why "Risk"/"Robotic Graffiti" haven't aired. On a Toonzone forum, someone posted that there is an unaired Halloween special for the show,Toonzone forum comment about the unaired Halloween episode. but so far, no physical evidence of this has been put forward, so this episode's existence remains unconfirmed. And finally, according to a FaceBook interview with show creator Greg Miller, it is clear that the planned series finale involves Robot Jones exterminating the human civilization and ruling the planet, but unfortunately before this could be revealed, the show was cancelled, making "Rules of Dating" the last episode of the show (even that one wasn't actually intended to be the actual series finale in the first place). So while it's just barely possible to find all of the episodes in varying degrees of quality, it's even more difficult to find all of the original cuts of the episodes. As for the never released audio and episodes, Miller claims to be in possession of VHS copies of work prints of the Season 2 (and maybe pre-Season 2) episodes with the original voice floating around somewhere, and while it apparently may be difficult to get any storyboards or concept art of the show from Miller, storyboards from the aforementioned talk show episode have been made available online from Chuck Klein's blogspot. UPDATE (2/27/14): 3 episodes using the original audio were uploaded to YouTube, making the total of episodes recovered up to 4; the uploader, CartoonArchive has stated that he may own more episodes using the original voice, but it is unknown. Additionally, on the exact same day, YouTube user '1mjusth3r3' uploaded some commercials from the show in its early days that also use the original voice. UPDATE (5/13/17): Good news if you wouldn't know it, SuperPowerpuff2061 (known as Bigfatloser86 on deviantART) has uploaded all of the Season 1 with the original voice onto Dailymotion (including the uncensored version of "Growth Spurts" whose video source derives from the recently uploaded Portuguese dub on YouTube), using video sources from the same videos uploaded from before but dubbed with audio taken from low-quality camera recordings of the original episodes uploaded by NickDanielsen on Vimeo. Hallelujah for all the RJ fans who always wanted all the Season 1 episodes with the original voice. As of October 2017, a user by the name of NickDanielson, who uploaded all the first season episodes with the original voice (recorded via camera) recently got suspended from Vimeo. Luckily, all the Season 1 episodes with the original voice have been saved and are now audio-synced in higher quality from the Latin-Spanish and/or Portuguese dubs from Tooncast. A user has synced the English audio to the Spanish and/or Portuguese video sources in higher quality and uploaded them, along with the majority of the show's episodes, on a Google Doc. https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3bfMI5ZZEpGaXJVd1RQczJHQU0 On Feb 24, 2018, a user by the name of Vance's TV Archive dug up the original voice airings of "Pilot", "Politics" and "PU to P.E." with higher quality audio on a VHS tape. However, this recording of "PU to P.E." cuts off halfway through the recording. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcb5De3UHpk On April 11, 2018, a user by the name of Jeremii uploaded the original version of "Growth Spurts" (with the original voice + the uncensored "Kickass" banner) off a promotional tape to archive.org. UPDATE (6/21/18): The good news is, I found Parents and Embarrassment (both original voice) in better audio quality here. That means we have every Season 1 episode with original voice in higher audio quality, so now only Electric Boogaloo is the only one we need to get in its entirety and in higher audio quality, if only someone has a VHS rip. The bad news is, some of my OV episodes got flagged and taken down from Google Drive due to copyright crap, but don't worry. Now that I got Parents and Embarrassment (both original voice) in better audio quality, I've re-uploaded anything including both of these episodes to the Drive download again, hoping they don't get taken down once more. For extra bonus, I also finally found a higher-quality version of the Robot Jones Cartoon Cartoon Fridays bumper intro (where he says "Cartoon Cartoon Fridays!") with his actual MacinTalk/Word98 speaking line added in there (it was from the actual TV broadcast, and not fandubbed). UPDATE (7/3/18): The three new uploads of Cube Wars, Sickness, Parents, Embarrassment, Politics and Growth Spurts with the original voice got removed from YouTube. The uploader had backed them up on archive.org. UPDATE (9/11/18): Bad news, Turner is blocking episodes of Robot Jones and other Cartoon Network shows in the U.S. on YouTube. ;( Everyone make sure you have backups of the episodes (including the original voice ones, as well as better copies with better audio and video quality). Episode Availability The show has a total of 25 segments + 1 seven-minute pilot episode + a music video, totaling up to 27 segments total. 3 episodes are unknown to exist and 4 of them have remained unfinished due to the show's cancellation. Calculating the total amount of known segments on this list, the show would've had a total of 34 segments in all. References Category:Lost Animation Category:Lost Audio Category:Lost TV Category:Lost Episodes Category:Lost Cartoon Network